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The AP is reporting that the NASL has suspended its chairman, Aaron Davidson, who is also the Carolina RailHawks owner in the wake of the FIFA arrests. The league also has severed ties with Davidson's firm Traffic Sports USA. (I can't give you a link right now, because it is coming off my employer's AP wire feed.)
The league is saying the RailHawks will continue to operate.
Davidson has been named by the US Justice Department "as among four defendants described as sports marketing executives."

The NASL has been backing away from Traffic for several years... which isn't easy given Traffic basically spearheaded the league breaking away from USL. It's even to the point where a conspiracy theorist was saying that MLS-backed USSF threw NASL under the bus.

Do have a chuckle at that. Traffic was always dealing in some shady crap (third party player contracts). FIFA pretty much wanted them out, too.

(Half of the arrests yesterday involve subjects we already knew and Sepp Blatter already threw them under the bus. So some people think Blatter aided in housekeeping yesterday. That doesn't mean that Jack Warner hasn't threatened to sing again- which is this morning's news- though the actual threat of jail time now may make a difference. Question is whether Warner can truly deliver on Blatter with any shred of credibility.)

And I'm not sure NASL doesn't take a significant hit for this. So much for my worrying about this back in March. We're still talking about some quite viable franchises in Indianapolis, Minnesota (which is IF the MLS bid fails to get the stadium approved in time; the fine print says it was a conditional award), San Antonio... and really Jacksonville this year. However, Carolina has been for sale for a while and nothing yet. Edmonton... don't look at the team behind the curtain.

Maybe the bigger problem yesterday... 0 for 7 against USL teams in the Open Cup and only two wins against PDL/Amateur teams. Rather dreadful. Whether NASL/Traffic issues had anything to do with that, I have my doubts.

...so now you basically set up USSF "demoting" the NASL and "promoting" USL. USSF was probably headed there anyway, now it has to, and the likelihood of a court challenge (which USSF could have lost, BTW) based on anti-trust is probably a lot less likely to succeed.

So do viable teams leave the NASL? Do they form a new league and apply for 2nd division, do they jump to USL, does MLS pick off a couple anyway? Will I think about this at all while I'm in Canada for 12 days? Will Sam get feisty for Feist's sake? Will Dino come back and have an argument?

(OK, just an aside, but I find it hard not to think about the value of Chuck Blazer's 10% when he started skimming off the top and that 10% when he finally got busted. Do you give that man credit for finding an audience in the interim? BTW... part of the point of this is that the USSF had no bids seeking a pro/rel structure when it was establishing MLS in the first place, and this was at the EARLY end of Blazer's skimming. Sheesh.)

Now I am only a casual observer of FC Edmonton, I don't follow the team intently or anything. But Edmonton is the closest big city to me and I read their papers and I thought the Faths were a good ownership group. What's the story on your comments? I am not saying you're wrong, just curious the story.